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Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a tower defence game set in ancient Japan. Demons are invading villages located on the slopes of a mountain, and the player must protect the priestess Yoshiro while she cleanses torii gates with a dance ritual.

Gameplay (high quality)

• There are a few interesting changes to the usual tower defence format. Firstly, each map has a day/night cycle. During the day, Yoshiro will move slowly towards the torii gate, while the player collects resources and sets up defences. During the night, demons will emerge from portals to attack Yoshiro, and the player must defend her until sunrise. Most maps should take 3-4 days to complete.
• Instead of defending a base which is always in the same place on the map, you’ll need to regularly change your defensive layout to adapt to Yoshiro’s new location. Fortunately, instead of placing towers in specific locations, you’ll recruit villagers who can be repositioned at any time to defend different paths. And you can control how far Yoshiro moves, which allows you to try to set up in a safer tactical position.
• Villagers can be assigned to different roles. Woodcutters, spearmen, and sumo wrestlers use melee attacks, while archers and marksmen have ranged attacks. The shaman can heal allies, while the thief can unlock chests but won’t fight demons. Each role costs crystals to purchase, but you also need to spend crystals to advance Yoshiro’s path, so you need to balance your tactics between cheap/weak units and expensive/strong units, while deciding how far to move across the map each day.
• The player also controls a samurai called Soh, and can run around the map fighting demons yourself. This provides another tactical option. Do you want to split villagers between multiple paths, while you try to support the group which most needs your help? Or do you want to put all villagers on one path to completely lock it down, and then try to solo another path?
• Soh’s combat style combines basic attacks (left click) with more powerful dance attacks (right click), which can be chained together like you’re performing moves in a fighting game. For example, left/right will perform an uppercut which is useful to hit flying enemies, while left/left/left/right will perform a long chain of attacks to hit multiple enemies in a line.
• Some maps have objects which can be built in predetermined locations, such as barriers and traps which can slow down or damage demons, and towers where ranged units can stand to extend the distance of their attacks.
• Some maps also have special conditions which provide gameplay variety, such as Soh having to fight alone without the assistance of villagers, defending with villagers only because Soh is unable to fight, defending boats as you sail across a lake, or moving through dark caves while activating lanterns so that you can see nearby enemies.
• After completing most maps, there’ll be a boss fight in a small arena against a large demon which has unique movement and attack patterns.
• Between missions, you’ll need to assign workers to repair buildings within each village. This can be quite tedious and repetitive because, due to the limited number of available workers, if you want to repair everything, you’ll need to return to each village several times. However, its worth doing because you’ll gain resources which can be spent to level up the different combat roles with more health, attack power, and special abilities, and to acquire new abilities for Soh.
• Difficulty level isn’t too challenging. I lost some maps during the second half of the campaign, but it was usually obvious what I’d done wrong, and I was able to win on the second or third attempt, mostly just using a simple 50/50 split between medium cost melee and ranged units.

Story (no rating)

• There’s no story other than a few silent cutscenes, and no dialogue. I don’t mention this as a negative, but rather a missed opportunity to elevate a good game to a great game. Tell me how Yoshiro and Soh got their powers, tell me where the demons come from, make me care about the villagers I’m protecting. Later in the game I noticed something happening to Yoshiro that definitely would have been interesting to discuss.

Technical (high quality)

• It took me 16 hours to complete the campaign.
• Performance is flawless. No crashes, no framerate drops, and absolutely no stutters (RTX 3080, i7-12700K, 32GB DDR4, 1440p). I wish every modern game would perform like this.
• Visual design of enemies is interesting and unique.

Recommendation

Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is a good game, which fans of tower defence or other tactical games should enjoy. I definitely recommend checking it out on a small sale.